In the process of publishing my first book myself, I realized that with the 650,000 symbols (letters, numbers, punctuation, etc.) in addition to the thousands of literary elements (characters, settings, conflicts, arcs, plots, sub-plots, emotions, ...) that even if I got 99.9% of it all perfect, it would still leave about a thousand errors. And with each error comes the possibility of kicking a reader out of the story (there might also be some that luckily add charm, which one runs the risk of removing through the editing process). In addition to this, my brain is able to compensate for errors far too easily, making it harder to see what problems exist in the book (which I hear is why even the best copy editors will probably only get about 80% of the grammar and spelling errors).
So I understand much better why even publishing companies with there teams of editors still leave a fair number of errors in books.
And while one perhaps shouldn't "look down" while setting such lofty ambitions of being in the top fraction of a percentile of authors just to be successful, I feel for those like Aaron Rayburn, author of
The Shadow God (
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shadow-God-Aaron-Rayburn/dp/1418499757 ) who have the natorious reputation for being at the bottom of the barrel. A position that we, as authors, face taking up by putting ourselves out there for the full scrutiny of the world.
But I did always want to publish myself because I wanted to learn everything I could about everything involved with writing, and I'm glad that as a self-published author I am able to fix problems that are discovered as quickly as they are found.
The one thing, however, that I'm really struggling with at the moment (besides possibly a bit of stage fright) is now switching back to "creator mode" and turning off the internal editor so that I can write the next hundred thousand words. I think, with my first book, I've narrowed it down to as good as it's going to get. (Which is hopefully somewhere closer to J.K. Rowlings than Aaron Rayburn, but I know, realistically, is somewhere in between.) Perhaps it is in part because of the "stage fright" that I'm having a hard time focusing on creating the next story, which I want to be even more amazing than the first.
I think that The Deposed King makes it look too easy. I'm always amazed at how much he is able to do. I want to be more like that, but I feel stuck. How do you push forward and fall in love again with the writing? How do you keep the dream alive and still face all of the realistic problems that one must face to be successful?
I know that even James Patterson has his bad days (
You've Been Warned was one of his that was at the bottom of the barrel). But as somebody new, like myself, how do you overcome the "you're not good enough" or decide that maybe this isn't for me? I'm not fishing for compliments (though I guess if you wanted to, I wouldn't mind a lot of more favorable reviews on Amazon
). I want to hear what you do on your rough days to stay motivated and keep pumping out words even if, like with Stephen King, most of them will have to be rewritten.